Hello --- Have a external HD that contains video and audio files --- its over 2tb  -- I can do a robocopy  to copy/clone the drive, but  even with the /mt  robocopy  switch to add extra thread its takes  hours ---  

It is  possible that  cloning the drive could be  faster?

Thanks

Cloning a drive will usually (always?) be faster than performing a file-level copy of the same amount of data, yes. This is especially true when the files themselves are smaller on average, since that introduces more file system overhead per unit of actual data transferred when performing file-level copies, but that doesn’t exist when performing block-level data transfers. The downside is that you won’t be able to access the target at all while the clone is running, which isn’t true of a file-level copy.

+x

 

jphughan - 26 May 2018 3:50 AM

Cloning a drive will usually (always?) be faster than performing a file-level copy of the same amount of data, yes. This is especially true when the files themselves are smaller on average, since that introduces more file system overhead per unit of actual data transferred when performing file-level copies, but that doesn’t exist when performing block-level data transfers. The downside is that you won’t be able to access the target at all while the clone is running, which isn’t true of a file-level copy.

thanks for the reply  --- you you mean the  "access the source" not "access the target"? 

No, I meant the target. When you run a clone, the target partition can’t be accessed in Windows (except by Reflect) until the clone is complete. The source remains available since the clone operation is read-only for that partition.

+x

 

jphughan - 26 May 2018 2:24 PM

No, I meant the target. When you run a clone, the target partition can’t be accessed in Windows (except by Reflect) until the clone is complete. The source remains available since the clone operation is read-only for that partition.

OK -- yes thanks for the info --  have a good day